Homo nocturnos

We’ve met the types during our college dorm days – guys and girls who burned the midnight oil literally, not because they’re the studious types but because they just couldn’t sleep. They would flip over in bed from edge to edge, make annoying noise and disturb our sleep, then get out of bed and turn the lights on, and create more annoying noise and an even greater disturbance.



The next day, these people get raccoon eyes (darkened eyebags) and take pills with names that sound like the ones taking them are in big trouble. And they are. For what animal can say he’s got a life when he’s losing sleep for no apparent reason? Even if that animal were as nocturnal as a night owl, he’d certainly look unglamorous with raccoon eyes.



Being a part-time insomniac (I fall asleep 75% of the time), I only know one-third of the story. An empirical investigation is in order.



I often get catatonic after ingesting mushrooms, chocolates, breads and pasta that’s not fresh, beer, and other poisons. I think it’s the mold. I usually solve the problem by avoiding these foods and solving crossword puzzles, as though I’ve got bigger puzzles to solve in life. It’s been like this since I started working and so far, I think it’s all a matter of eating the wrong thing.



Spin, a 30-year old freelance heckler, thinks genital self-stimulation solves the problem better than counting stupid sheep. “The thing started when I was a kid, in my desire to sneak up on my parents to play Nintendo/Sega. Then I discovered Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Night life was never the same till then.”



When Karin, a young accountant, is attacked by insomnia, it is because she has preconditioned herself about it. She says she’s been like this since she was a schoolgirl, driven by her desire to top her class. She just had to study all night through. Call it ambitious and selfish but she eventually graduated summa cum laude. Joke. She ‘only’ graduated with honors. Not bad for a full-time nerd.



Karin makes me remember a college dean who chooses to be philosophical about it. He said, “He’d rather be awake because there’s our eventual death to take care of the long recharging needed.” Makes sense to me.



While these people seem to have figured out the answer to the puzzle of zombie-hood, others can’t seem to put a finger on it. That’s when being an insomniac becomes really a problem.



Ronnel, part-salesman, part-TV writer, has tried just about everything you’d care to try as a cure – from milk and bananas for the L-tryptophan, to coffee, tea, cigarettes and porn. All -- especially the supposed stimulants -- eventually became certified downers, i.e., they’re all a letdown. He once settled down to reading Shakespeare and finishing The Brothers Karamazov and the time-tested Finnegan’s Wake – all to no avail. Now he’s dropping all pretenses and trying something like Cryptonomicon. If it fails, he plans to punish this book by turning it into a pillow or a door stopper.



The same folks, different strokes, huh?

One of the most bizarre tales of all is the one I’ve read about in Ananova. It’s about a 63-year-old geezer in Ukraine who hasn't slept for more than two decades and yet doctors deny he’s a zombie. Fyodor Nesterchuk, an insurance broker, reports, "I can't remember the exact date and I don't know why it started, but all of a sudden I found it more and more difficult to nod off until eventually I was awake the entire night.” "I used to read boring scientific periodicals in the hope they would send me to sleep. But as soon as I felt my eyes getting droopy and put the magazine down, I would find myself wide awake again…. I've [learned to] simply…get used to it.”



All attempts by doctors to put him to sleep have failed, says the report.



The ‘disease’ is especially unfair to those who declare a clear conscience and not be able to sleep well, while multiple murderers, rapists, illegal loggers, and stealers of railroad tracks don’t seem to belong to the usual profile of the sleep-deprived. The thing is, the sleep-deprived are just like you and me.



Tabs, whose secret crimes would shame Hitler and his Auschwitz subalterns, only blurted out, “Let me sleep over it first,” when I interrogated her on suspicion that she couldn’t sleep at night.



Those who do the graveyard shift at the call centers understandably look at insomnia as an advantage – they get to be paid for it. Richard, a shift supervisor in Ayala, says his salary is essentially a hazard pay for the reversed circadian rhythm. “If my eyelids don’t get droopy by sunrise,” he says in between sips of frappuccino, “well, I can always say, ‘I’ve got reverse insomnia.’”



Other folks, likewise, would rather stay awake. Karin says she takes advantage of the deprivation by studying more in the hope for further advancement at work. Catherine, a molecular biologist/novelist, finds it perfect for finishing her Roman novels. Kristen, a student at Southville who belongs to a band, puts it this way: “Sleeping feels good,

but you can't really accomplish anything.”



We part-time insomniacs manage to laugh it all off but full time-insomniacs like Alma (okay, ‘major’ is more like it) claims, “You don’t want to be in my shoes!”-- in sharp contrast to the case of the Ukrainian guy who thinks it’s but natural for a man to be a plant. (Plants don’t hold slumber or pajama parties, do they?)



Alma relates to me how she would have loved to forego all the wide-awake shows on cable TV in exchange for some forty to fifty winks. A paranoid at heart, she refuses to take any medication. She gets her just desserts – sleep deprivation for 24 hours straight! She says she must have been a fish or a bullfrog in winter hibernation in previous life that’s why she’s making up for all the lost time. She’s been like this on and off for about five years. She has yet to experience the joys of propping her heavy eyelids with toothpicks or anything just so she’d keep herself awake.



Lia, a recent insomniac, has the unfortunate fate of being assured she’s been possessed by the devil that’s why she couldn’t sleep. She’s so offended by it that she cried off her sleep instead. But all she got for her troubles was a sopping-wet pillow.



“If all fails,” her cousin Jinky advised, “there’s the fifteen mysteries of the rosary to figure out.” I have yet to follow up Lia on this.



When it comes right down to it, the physiology involved in insomnia remains largely a mystery. Is it all about troubled psyches? Some biochemical snafus? Unpaid credit card problems? Should insomniacs start taking Rorschach inkblot tests and the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure exam to determine once for all whether they’re different from the rest?



According to Dr. Thess T., “There is no exact pathophysiology for insomnia because it has a variety of causes. Extrinsic insomnia is caused by transient situation insomnia or inadequate sleep hygiene. Pathophysiologic insomnia is triggered by emotional stress. Then there's drug/medicine- or alcohol-dependent insomnia. Altitude insomnia. Restless legs syndrome. Periodic limb movement disorder. Insomnia associated with mental disorders. Insomnia associated with neurologic disorders. Lastly, there's insomnia associated with other medical disorders, like rheumatism.”



Oh-okay. Having no definitive answer from those who prescribe Dormicum, Lexotan and Valium themselves, let me take the law into my own hands then… This is a bad joke, but who knows… breeding tsetse flies might just be the answer? You know, tsetse flies… sleeping disease…



1.24.2005



Resty S. Odon



Ref.: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1249864.html